Create your first blueprint

vRealize Automation 8

vRealize Automation (vRA) has a large toolbox where you can create amazing services work the line of business. In this post I’ll show how you can start creating your first simple service. The prerequisite is a basic configured vRA as in the post “First simple configuration of Realize Automation” and also a vSphere template that can be cloned.

After loggin in, navigating to “Design”, “Blueprints” and click “New”.

Give the blueprint a name, and select what project it belongs to. Then click create to get in to the blueprint designer.

From the toolbox on the left side, drag and drop a “vSphere Machine” on to the design canvas. The machine object will immediate be represented as YAML code in the right side. Change the “property “image:” to “imageRef:” and select one of the vSphere Templates listed in the UI. With “constraints:” you can specify where the object is going to be created and in this example we’ll specify the tag “compute:vcenter”.

formatVersion: 1
inputs: {}
resources:
  Cloud_vSphere_Machine_1:
    type: Cloud.vSphere.Machine
    properties:
      imageRef: template-centos-7.6
      cpuCount: 1
      totalMemoryMB: 1024
      constraints: 
        - tag: compute:vcenter

By adding a “vSphere Network” object to the canvas and link the VM to the network you can use “constraints:” to control what nport group the VM i connected to. “assignment:dynamic” specifies that the VM is getting a IP address from a DHCP server.

formatVersion: 1
inputs: {}
resources:
  Cloud_vSphere_Machine_1:
    type: Cloud.vSphere.Machine
    properties:
      imageRef: template-centos-7.6
      cpuCount: 1
      totalMemoryMB: 1024
      constraints:
        - tag: 'compute:vcenter'
      networks:
        - network: '${resource.Cloud_vSphere_Network_1.id}'
          assignment: dynamic
  Cloud_vSphere_Network_1:
    type: Cloud.vSphere.Network
    properties:
      networkType: existing
      constraints: 
        - tag: network:default

The last step is to add a tag to control what datastore to place the VM on. Also click the “Test” button on the lower left. This will parse alla the YAML code and vRA will test to see if everything is resolved in to infrastructure.

formatVersion: 1
inputs: {}
resources:
  Cloud_vSphere_Machine_1:
    type: Cloud.vSphere.Machine
    properties:
      imageRef: template-centos-7.6
      cpuCount: 1
      totalMemoryMB: 1024
      constraints:
        - tag: 'compute:vcenter'
      storage:
        constraints:
          - tag: 'storage:default'
      networks:
        - network: '${resource.Cloud_vSphere_Network_1.id}'
          assignment: dynamic
  Cloud_vSphere_Network_1:
    type: Cloud.vSphere.Network
    properties:
      networkType: existing
      constraints:
        - tag: 'network:default'

To actually create a VM from this blueprint you click “Deploy”. Give the deployment a name and select the version. We haven’t created any versions yet so the only choice is “Current Draft”.

If you choose to continue with “Deploy” then the focus will shift in to “Deployments” and the current deployment. After a while your deployment is done, and you can then perform Day-two-operations This can be “Power On/Power off”, “Create Snapshot”. etc.

“Close” will take you out of the current deployment and in to the “all deployment list” There you can do Day-Two -Operation on the whole deployment, and not only per object.

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